Chef Chat

Chef teaches how to eat well without paying a lot

Kathy Block-Brown has worn many hats in her life - teacher, corporate trainer, education administrator, wife, mom and grandmother - but professionally it's her chef's toque that may suit her the best.

Block-Brown, 59, who was born and raised in the Milwaukee area, trained in the Cordon Bleu program at the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Ore., and has been a chef and instructor at that city's premier cooking school, In Good Taste.

Earlier in her life she studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, got her B.S. degree in education from UW-Milwaukee and taught in the Milwaukee Public Schools.

She followed her sister to California and obtained her M.A. in education at California State, Hayward.

Block-Brown became a chef when she moved to the Pacific Northwest, no job in sight, and figured if she had to start over, it might as well be at something she really liked.

One of the first cooks to influence Block-Brown had been her Hungarian grandmother, a dominant presence in the family's kitchen; a favorite was her cold cherry soup with sour cream, goulashes and apple strudel.

In Portland, Block-Brown formed her own catering business and cooking school, Four Seasons Flavor, but it's her consulting work in the community and most recently with the Oregon Food Bank's nutrition education program that matters most to her.

Q. Talk a little about your community work.

A. There's a program nationally called Share Our Strength that has helped write a curriculum for food banks to use with typical clients: people working on a limited income or living in assisted housing, or people with disabilities, helping them figure out how to eat highly nutritious food in the least expensive way they can.

I've actually worked with a group of kids who have just come out of the Oregon Youth Authority, teenagers who would be considered definitely at risk.

Q. At risk?

A. All the kids were incarcerated with the Oregon Youth Authority, and now they've been released to a residential program as part of their sentencing.

Q. What kinds of offenses might they have been guilty of?

A. To be in a state facility, it's pretty serious. They're all felonies. What these particular kids have done I don't know.

Q. Why is a program that involves food and nutrition important?

A. Coming from another part of my background working with alcohol and drug offenders in a jail setting, (I knew) nutrition was a huge issue, especially for people in recovery.

My guess is, with most of these kids, if (alcohol or drugs) wasn't the primary reason they were incarcerated, it definitely was a secondary reason.

Learning how to eat in a healthy way, to stabilize their bodies if they get back into the community, is really important. Finding ways to eat inexpensively and with high nutrition is probably the priority.

Q. Why do you think this kind of work matters?

A. Especially with the recession, people who had been able to feed their families fairly well all of a sudden had to make choices about whether to buy food or pay their rent.

A lot of times, people automatically go to eating fast food because they can get two burgers for a buck, but the amount of nutrition is minute.

Some folks are carrying two or three jobs and have small children, and how do you do all that with the amount of time that you have in the day?

Q. What specifically do you teach?

A. It's really simple things. It could be knife skills, or sanitation, or where to buy the least expensive kale, or how to eat meatless and enjoy it.

Q. Does the client base listen to you any differently because you're a chef?

A. I think so. I think chefs still have a little bit of rock-star quality to them. Yeah, they do listen.

Q. How did Milwaukee shape you in a culinary sense?

A. There are all kinds of neighborhoods (in Milwaukee) that represent different immigrant groups from around the world.

As a kid, I ventured into those neighborhoods a lot and became aware of all the different flavors and layering of flavors. I had a real appreciation for multi-ethnic food.

Q. How has Portland changed you as a cook?

A. I'm much more aware of where my food comes from and the connection that I have, personally and professionally, with those who grow and produce the food that I eat or that I cook for somebody else.

Ronnie Hess is the author of a culinary travel guide, "Eat Smart in France." She lives in Madison.